


The Same Name for Different Things

by idola



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idola/pseuds/idola
Summary: Everything's great after conquering Belial, to the point where Judar would be fine with every day lasting forever.Wanting things to last feels weird after everything that's happened to him.
Relationships: Judal | Judar/Ren Hakuryuu
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	The Same Name for Different Things

**Author's Note:**

> i found this in the depths of gdocs almost complete and timestamped as last edited in 2017. juhaku time capsules? they're out there... though i ended up finishing it, so maybe it doesn't qualify as a time capsule anymore

For years Judar had to badger Hakuryuu to get a conversation out of him. For years he had to force himself into Hakuryuu’s life just to make sure he didn’t forget he was an option.

But years were over now. The past was the past. The present saw them as a team.

Things were _so easy._ Hakuryuu talked with him about all sorts of things from the second they came out of Belial’s dungeon. He wanted to know about the kinds of missions Al-Thamen sent him on, what kinds of magic he could do, what they would do next… well, what Judar would do next. Hakuryuu knew exactly what his own goals were.

Maybe it was just information seeking, and maybe he was only curious because he saw Judar as suspicious even after declaring them partners. That was probably all there was to it.

But still! The change was pretty amazing. The black rukh inside of Hakuryuu was pretty amazing, too, agitated - no, not agitated, excited, they were excited - in a way that Hakuryuu’s rukh never used to be. 

It was enough to make Judar look forward to the future, something he’d never had much interest in when he was with Al-Thamen. He’d spend a lot of time seething about the past and daydreaming about worlds he never thought would happen, sure. Worlds that involved Hakuryuu taking his hand. But he never would have called it the ‘future.’

Hakuryuu always had the potential to take his hand, so Judar always offered it to him. But if he’d really take it or not… well, he wouldn’t have been that surprised if Hakuryuu batted his hand away until he died. Because he wouldn’t have been surprised, he never would have been disappointed.

Fate just didn’t see the two of them together. Fate saw things that caused life, not things that caused death, and what could their partnership ever bring about but corpses?

So he dreamed of a world untainted by the fate that kept him a king-less magi.

That was then. This was now.

Gyokuen was dead by their hands. The palace was filled with people who didn’t have enough of a mind left to realize that they didn’t want to be there anymore.

More importantly, the dream where Hakuryuu stood by his side wasn’t a dream anymore. It was real. He felt the warmth of Hakuryuu’s hand and the heat of the blood dripping out of it back in Belial’s dungeon. It was real, even if only illusions born of Belial’s powers had surrounded them. 

It didn’t make up for the way he had lived until now, but it was damn close to being worth it for.

Judar couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. Hakuryuu seemed happier, too. But maybe not in the same way. It wasn’t what Hakuryuu had spent his life wanting, after all. Judar knew he was Hakuryuu’s last choice, and it was fine because Hakuryuu didn’t have anyone else anymore, and this _was_ the life Judar had spent his life wanting. A life standing on the same level as the king of his choosing.

“You’re in a good mood today,” Hakuryuu commented as Judar flew above him. At first it had weirded Hakuryuu out a little to always have Judar above him, behind him, where he could attack perfectly from. But Hakuryuu had a lot more trust in him since Gyokuen died. Letting Judar skip his own work to follow Hakuryuu and talk with him had become an almost daily occurrence. He didn’t mind even when Judar closed his eyes and grabbed a fistful of Hakuryuu’s clothes to pull him through the air, so Judar did it the second he got close enough.

“I’m always in a good mood,” Judar answered.

“You’ve certainly been flying around and smiling like a madman,” Hakuryuu said. He stopped walking and Judar stopped in air above him. His braid swished in the air and bumped Hakuryuu’s shoulder lightly. Hakuryuu turned around to look at him, eyes searching. Like he wanted to understand why Judar was so happy. He loved that. “Are you that excited for the war?”

“Yeah! Yeah.”

“You sure do like fighting.”

With that, Hakuryuu turned back away and continued down the hall. He was heading out to observe the progress of the soldiers he had Belial controlling, most likely. What an amazing metal vessel. Or maybe the praise belonged to Hakuryuu, who learned how to use a nasty vessel that could invade minds in an even nastier way - by making the intrusion both physical and mental instead of settling for only one.

“You like fighting, too,” Judar said. “Why else would you spend your whole life aspiring to this?”

“I don’t like to fight like Kouen does. This is a necessity.”

Judar laughed. “It’s not just Kouen, right? All the rest of your family too.”

“Anyone who defends him and the world he aspires to create. I’ve already decided that they need to die.”

Yeah. That was ‘right.’

He couldn’t help but smile. See, he knew that this was bad. It was all bad. Terrible, even. At the same time as it was horrible of them to even exist like this, Judar’s life was damn perfect in this instant. 

His good mood didn’t come from Hakuryuu saying that he wanted to kill Kouen. It came from the other end of the conversation.

_“Are you that excited for the war?”_

He said it like a joke, but it was an honest question.

Hakuryuu was still trying to understand him while letting himself believe they understood each other perfectly. It showed in the way he asked around the question of why Judar was happy. Maybe Judar understood how Hakuryuu was perfectly. After all, he’d seen hundreds of kings and would-be kings fall into depravity already. But Hakuryuu was still trying to understand his side of things.

It was different from the ‘Judar won’t understand’ that Kougyoku would mumble and the ‘you could never understand’ that Sinbad always told him. With Hakuryuu it was an honest ‘I want to understand,’ even if he never directly said so.

It was a weird feeling. It was the first time, to be clear. It was the first time and he had the strange feeling that came with all new things. It did nothing to dampen his happiness. Judar thought he might like it. Might like Hakuryuu more than those two.

“But…”

Judar raised his head from where he’d been resting it against his staff. “Hm?”

“Two years ago I would have never done this.”

“What do you mean? You’ve wanted to do this your whole life.” It was a lie, sure. But it was a lie Hakuryuu needed to hear.

“No… Two years ago I might have still been able to become like Alibaba.”

“Alibaba?”

“Aladdin’s king. Remember?”

“Oh, right. That guy. Did you _want_ to be like him?”

“It’s just that he’s always so happy, like he’s surrounded by light,” Hakuryuu said.

“I’m always happy too.”

“Are you?”

“Sure.”

“…I don’t think I could live like Alibaba now, surrounded by light. But when I see you so excited, sometimes it feels like there are things I can still do.”

“Aw… You really think so?”

Hakuryuu ignored his fond, half-joking cooing. “At first it seemed weird to me that you could find happiness in war. But that’s not really it at all… I misunderstood you for a long time. For that, I’m sorry.”

“Wh, what?” That wasn’t the direction he expected the conversation to take. “Uh… You sure you’ve got it right?”

“Of course I do. We’re the same.”

Catching him off guard was Hakuryuu’s secret talent.

\---

The soldiers were doing well. As well as anyone could be doing with plants growing in their brains, anyway.

Judar was sure that Hakuryuu realized that if he wanted to, _really_ wanted to, he could shatter Judar’s borg and do the same to him. That’s what he would have done if he didn’t trust Judar at all. If Sinbad had Belial and Judar were Sinbad’s magi, it would be what Sinbad would have done.

Not that he meant to compare Hakuryuu to would-have-beens or anything. He was just happy. Hakuryuu’s resolve was strong in all the right places, and that was something he’d always admired about him. Something he’d probably always admire, even if their partnership went south someday.

Hakuryuu usually checked on the soldiers at the beginning and end of the day, so finishing up with their ‘maintenance’ was the last piece of his daily routine. Being the emperor was a lot of work and Judar was glad it wasn’t his responsibility. Instead he got to fly leisurely behind Hakuryuu on the way back to the palace, not needing to be on guard for the age old annoyance of getting called off to open a dungeon for a stranger any longer.

“What do you want to do now?” Judar asked. Half the time Hakuryuu would say he had more work to attend to and the other half of the time he would let Judar take the lead.

“Before we do anything else I wanted to ask you something,” Hakuryuu said. “Earlier you didn’t remember who Alibaba was. But if I’m remembering correctly, you were at Balbadd.”

“Yeah. That’s where I know him from. He just isn’t all that memorable?”

“And you were in Balbadd doing… something for the organization. Right?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Alibaba may be our enemy soon. As a dungeon conqueror and Aladdin’s king, we should consider our tactics.”

If Hakuryuu just wanted to talk about Alibaba or whatever his name was, Judar thought he should say so. It was irritating. Alibaba shouldn’t have been special except that he was Aladdin’s king. And he was a lousy choice at that. Less magoi than Hakuryuu and less attractive than Hakuryuu.

“You’ve mastered Belial’s djinn equip now, right?” Judar asked. “Killing him should be as easy as it gets.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then you wanted to know what happened in Balbadd?”

“Yeah…”

Judar pretended to think for a little. He was asleep for a lot of the action, as good as dead. It sure hurt enough to be real death. Because he wasn’t really there for most of it, he probably didn’t have the answer that Hakuryuu wanted to hear. Judar couldn’t tell him anything that would clear his mind of whatever memories of those guys he had. He just didn’t know most of what happened. There was always lying, but he had the feeling Hakuryuu would catch on pretty fast if all he did was lie. Then the fragile trust he’d worked so hard for would be gone.

Still, it was too irritating to admit that a djinn had defeated him, even if it was cheating. Better cut that bit. “I was supposed to kill him or something, since he’s a nuisance to the flow of fate. Don’t really remember.”

“He’s still alive.”

“Yeah.”

“Normally you have no trouble killing people.”

“Yeah… but Aladdin was there too, you know? Us magi are strong. And he was cheating, too!”

Hakuryuu ignored his excuses, instead choosing to stay silent.

So was that it, then? Hakuryuu just wanted to know what Judar thought about the brat magi and his king?

If that was what he wanted to hear then he should work on asking more directly. Even so, Judar couldn’t find it in himself to be all that annoyed. After all, Hakuryuu was putting so much effort into understanding him. Not Alibaba, not his sister, not anyone else. Only him.

“That’s where Aladdin showed you what happened to your parents, isn’t it? I’ve seen what Aladdin can do too,” Hakuryuu said. “He showed us… me, Alibaba, and Morgiana the life of a fallen girl in Zagan’s dungeon.”

“Al-Thamen really wanted Aladdin’s power,” Judar said.

“It’s omniscience, in a way. Anyone would want it.”

“Whose idea was it to give a kid omniscience?”

Hakuryuu shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll be here sooner than later. Might as well ask then.”

“I’d rather beat the shit out of him.”

“The same goes for Alibaba. Though I wouldn’t mind keeping him as a soldier.”

“You and your puppet soldiers!”

“Don’t act like you aren’t grinning at the thought.”

The palace guards saluted Hakuryuu with blank faces, rukh flashing purple, a tell-tale sign that Hakuryuu’s djinns had complete control over them.

It was amazing what Hakuryuu could do when he put his mind to it.

Even so, when it came down to it, Judar didn’t really think that Hakuryuu would get very far. And Judar would rather die fighting than live in a boring world that someone else created. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t enjoying himself as things came. He smiled at the guards controlled by Belial, even though he knew it wouldn’t last.

“Are you just going to float in the air all day?” Hakuryuu asked as they walked through the long halls.

“Who’s gonna stop me?”

“…No one. As long as you’ve prepared everything for the summit like I asked you to.”

“Stop badgering me about that! It’s not for another week.”

“I wouldn’t have to badger you if you’d just do it,” Hakuryuu said.

“C’mon, gimme a break. I’m working on it. Don’t you trust me?”

Hakuryuu rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I won’t force you to do it now, but if the summit comes and you’re not ready…”

“Yeah, yeah.” Judar pulled on Hakuryuu’s sleeve to pull himself closer again. “Hey.”

“What?”

“We’re the same,” Judar said. They weren’t, obviously. If they were then Hakuryuu wouldn’t have spent the past twenty minutes fishing for Judar’s opinion on things. He’d just know.

Hakuryuu met his eyes. The uncertainty in his expression relaxed a bit. “Yeah…”

“Yeah. That’s all that matters.”

The other magi probably cherished the differences between themselves and their kings. They were different people with different roles in the world. Trying to fill the same holes as each other was a losing battle. Every person had a unique shape. They had unique rukh. His own was different from Hakuryuu’s even though they were both dark now.

It was just… different. Having someone who wanted to be the same as him was different from the world of people who didn’t want to be like him. That feeling was something they shared. It was something valuable.

That was why he wanted it to last, even if it caused a lot of pain and suffering for everyone else in the world. Just let this one good thing last forever. Was that asking too much?

…Probably.


End file.
